Ian McEwan: "What We Can Know"

 Ian McEwan's modern classic "Atonement" starts with a kind of Agatha Christie setup. There is a crowded manor; there are hidden agendas.

Briony, the girl at the center of the events, believes that she sees a sexual assault. (What she really sees is just sex.) Because of class tensions, the wealthy people in the manor turn on an innocent young man. He is accused of a crime. The accusation ruins at least two lives. Suddenly, as in "To the Lighthouse," the camera pans out. We're in the midst of World War II--we move from one family's suffering to *cosmic* questions about suffering. The cosmic story does not diminish the domestic story. The two tales exist side by side.

Something similar happens in "What We Can Know," McEwan's new novel. We're in a small drama; the year is sometime around 1999. Francis is a Philip Larkin-ish poet, a bully, a climate-change skeptic, a narcissist. He has written a poem--apparently in tribute to his wife Vivien but actually for his own professional advancement. Vivien sort of likes her husband--also, she sort of dislikes him. She ensures (through spousal sabotage?) that Francis's poem never makes its way to a large audience. Is this because Francis's ego is finally exhausting, infuriating? Or....could Francis's poem, a hymn to nature, be seen as detrimental to the "cause" of various fossil fuel companies? Was Vivien paid by companies to "silence" Francis?

Just when we get comfortable with these questions, we flash forward one hundred years. We learn about the 2040s and 2050s. In the 2040s, climate-change denial becomes so intoxicating, it's called "the Derangement." Deteriorating supplies of freshwater lead to international conflict. Russia detonates an atomic bomb--which causes tsunamis in the Atlantic Ocean. The global population is reduced by one-half. Cities are quickly drowned in ocean water. Humans enter a new Dark Age. Tiny communities persist in little pockets of the planet--pockets at high elevations. It's a "survivor" (Tom) who has taken an interest in the poet Francis. Tom is researching Francis a century after Francis's death.

To add to the stew, Tom himself is having romantic difficulties. His wife is sleeping with an enemy--a student who wants to end Tom's academic career.

What I admire in McEwan's work is the soap-opera climate--the secrets, extramarital affairs, rumors, and mysteries. I also feel for Tom--who wonders why he is here, whether his professional interests have any value, whether his romantic affairs can be (should be) disentangled.

This is a tour de force--and so strange. Two thumbs up.